Abbott seems to have gone off the reservation. He’s always had a high opinion of his own judgement and intellect, and now there’s no holding him back.

Truly Murdoch has created the monster. It has broken its shackles and now wanders the world, frightening children and shirt-fronting adults at random. Its crazy ideas, reflecting its piecemeal make up – part journalist, part thug, part priest – are being let run wild. It won’t even listen to its master now, the man that gave it life.

Only one thing can tame its excesses, and that is Peta’s sweet whisper. She is with him night and day, always at hand, just off camera, in the room at even the highest level meetings. But lately even her calming words are not being heard.

Abbott is becoming used to being in charge. He’s learning that what he says goes. He’s never had this before. He’s always been the protégé, the golden boy who’s headed for great things, guided by the wisdom of a wise patron.

Well, now he’s arrived – and he’s doing to do those great things. Why confine your psyche to just inside your head, keeping counsel, waiting for The Day when you can paint a nation with your grand ideas and force even the mighty to call you “Sir”? There’s no more waiting. This is destiny. Tony’s mind has expanded, and now his canvas is a nation, but one he’s never loved for itself. It’s always been one he wanted to change to look more like where he came from, not realizing that place too has changed and has moved on.

He got rid of the schoolboy fringe he used to cover his thinning hair. He applied … something … was it Botox? Or some surgery? … to his forehead and his eyes to ease out the wrinkles. He’s combed his hair over like he’s seen real leaders do, the better to look the part. And his speech patterns have changed. He sounds more hesitant now, as if every word he utters is gold, to be taken down by adoring scribes and kept for posterity.

Sure, he can’t resist the simian swagger, and his suits are still too tight. That’s the boy in him, wanting to show off his physique. The hands are everywhere too: defensively, pushing away questions and criticism. He used to have a cruder use for his hands in his boxing days. One king-hit out of nowhere and he’d deck his opponent. But he can’t do that now. He has to settle for mugging his old punching bag, Joe; not really satisfying, but something of an outlet for his natural instincts.

Maybe he’s timed it well. Maybe he thinks he can cast off his backers in the media because the media isn’t as powerful as it once was, making and breaking kings and queens. Maybe he’s right. Maybe he’s wrong.

But he can’t cast off the ridicule. As he tries harder and harder to be ever more serious and statesmanlike, he’s the butt of more and more jokes. He believed once that cometh the office, cometh the man, but the cartoonists cruelly still depict him with those ears, those budgie smugglers, that hairy torso, those exaggeratedly cruel lips. They never show the New Tony, the one he’s always wanted to be, and was always told he could be. They laugh at him and his narcissm instead.

The man must be going crazy with frustration. It’s all fallen apart. His Macbethian plan to claw his way to the top has ended as all such progresses do: with more enemies to use as shields, no-one to trust, more blood and more dysfunction.

He thought Labor was dead. He killed it himself, didn’t he? He won so many battles against it … and still Labor lives. He made promises he shouldn’t have, and which he couldn’t possibly keep, right on election eve – and now they, like Labor, are coming back to haunt him, no matter how much he licks his lips, protests his innocence and redoubles his lies. Now he’s lying about lying. Did he say he’d never do that? He can’t remember. There have been so many lies. So many contradictions. So many speeches and interviews. Can he be expected to remember them all?

Bill Shorten just won’t play the way Tony wants him to play. Bill – boyish, quiet, considered, and intelligent, won’t come on to the battlefield and fight him man to man. Bill’s biding his time. It’s a war Abbott doesn’t like: one of manoeuvre, skirmishing, probing, even agreeing with him from time to time, avoiding a fight. With each clash Abbott loses a few more devotees he can’t replace. Volunteers and supporters are thinning out as they contemplate whether being otherwise engaged is the better option. He just can’t line up Bill Shorten for the sucker punch. He has to face it, Bill intends to go the full fifteen rounds. Until that time, Bill will dance and sting to weaken his opponent so that Abbott will be wounded and bloody when they come out into the ring for the penultimate bell.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. People have always been scared of Abbott, of his sheer naked aggressiveness, his mercilessness and of his ability, without reflection, to turn on anyone who gets in his way. He’s always liked being surrounded by bodies – friends or enemies. They’ve been his substitute for sandbags. But bodies bring blood and flies. People start to notice the stench of death around him.

The Catholic Bishops saw his temperament, and threw him out of the seminary for it. Jesus didn’t need a holy warrior to minister to a parish. He needed someone with empathy and humility, not a thug.

Australia celebrated his thuggishness, in a shameful period where they valued light entertainment because they could afford to. The nation was prospering. Vilifying Gillard was good sport. We kidded ourselves that if we called Gillard a liar over legislation then that would mean Global Warming would go away. We were on top of the world … ironically because Labor put us there while other countries fell by the wayside.

But now, digging holes and lecturing other nations has lost its authenticity. We’re becoming a basket case state, with a basket case leader at the helm. It’s no longer Reality TV. It’s Reality. Slogans and slagging-off won’t put meals on tables. A nation that is taxed higher and suffers cutbacks to basic services simply to satisfy its government’s insane surplus fetish – when that government puts little back by way of innovation, and actually closes productive industries down – is not a prosperous nation. It is a nation that is being laid waste by its own rulers to serve their vanity.

Why did we close down manufacturing? Who cares if imports are cheaper, if no-one can afford to buy them? What’s the point of the government’s coffers being full if the peoples’ are empty? And then there’s the dollar … are imports really even cheap anymore? We have high price tags on the things we’ve taken for granted for so long, and diminishing capacity to compete with those who charge them. We’ve pissed our economy up against the wall, in favour of a few brief, nothing moments on the world stage so that Abbott can indulge himself in his schoolboy fantasy of someday growing up and being respected among his peers. He had the chance to impress world leaders with his vision for a magnificent estate, and all he talked about was how he’d tidied up the back yard and pulled out a few weeds. Not satisfied with stalking the land, the monster now stalks the world.

billie
Yeah, she sounded like she was still in nappies. The fact when I got back to her after leaving half a dozen messages, did not know why I was calling although each message was clear with the reason I was calling, including messages passed on by the receptionist. was not what got my goat up, It was that she could only focus on the one straw, that my 2006 call centre job was not recent enough, to fob me off. I did not get fair, equitable and equal access to this vacancy, which being a government job, I should have. This process is too easily rorted for jobs for mates.

Billie,
I worked in the CES. We never checked that stuff, We were too busy putting people into jobs or training them, Social Security had their hit squad but they were more trying to catch out people with jobs and claiming the dole or single parents with boyfriends.

From William’s Fisher thread over the road.
[The last postals have been counted, of which there were only 30, and they have made no difference at all to Labor’s 21-vote lead. So unless anomalies emerge in the preference distribution or any recount that might be conducted, we can now say that the Liberals have not won the seat. Rather, the issue is whether it’s Labor’s Nat Cook (5501, 26.7%) or independent Dan Woodyatt (4794, 23.3%) who survives at the last exclusion. This is down to the 2861 votes cast for other candidates, how they split between Liberal, Labor and Woodyatt, and whether Woodyatt’s share of that total is 708 votes (24.75%) more than Cook’s. Woodyatt’s observation of the count has reportedly been that a “conservative” projection would bring it down the wire, suggesting he rates his own chances as better than even.]

‘Say that outside the Senate and I’ll sue your smug a*** off’: Mike Carlton threatens to take court action against George Brandis if he repeats claims the columnist was ‘sacked’ for ‘anti-Semitic journalism’

I think government departments use head hunters when they have quite prejudiced employee requirements. When the bosses requirements fly in the face of equal opportunity legislation.

To get another contract the head hunter filters out all those candidates that don’t meet the unwritten criteria. If any one questions the hirings, the employer can honestly say that they chose the best from those candidates who were presented.

I think outsourcing human resources or any other function is a method of denying responsibility. You can’t sue a head hunter who goes broke and re-emerges under a different name

I wish electoral commissions would just have the early votes counted on election day. Since they almost invariably go exceedingly well for Liberals, it’s just soul crushing to have leads evaporate because of a few thousand votes coming in a few days later saying that the Liberals are actually in with a chance.

Looking to 2018: If Labor loses 3 seats (Frankston, Carrum, and Bentleigh on uniform swing) it loses its majority however, in order to gain a majority the Coalition has to either gain seven seats off Labor (the seats mentioned above plus Mordialloc, Cranbourne, Eltham and Albert Park on uniform swing), or six of those seven seats plus either Prahran or Shepparton (or five if they win both).

That is a pretty slim margin. I think it might be a bit difficult for the Liberals to win back those 3 seats, but they’ll put up a huge fight because of their vulnerability, and since it’s less than 1%, it could go either way. It depends on how the feeling is in 2018 I guess. Voters might want to give Andrews another go and swing toward Labor rather than risk Matthew Guy as Premier, but then again, they might do the same as this time and go for the opposition.

I think the Liberals would have to win 5 seats for Labor to be in any sort of trouble though, as long as the Greens hold Melbourne and Prahran. And I think they will, since the Green vote seems to go up massively when they have sitting MP’s.

You really ought to read Guy Rundle’s take on the Prahran election and The Age article on Luke Hilakari.

The dinosaurs of the Labor Right and the Coalition have lost to grass roots campaigning that has been happening all year. Today’s youth aren’t politically disengaged they are just not engaged with Liberal or Labor. Labor has no credibility with dinosaurs like Senator Joe Bullock instead of Louise Pratt.

I won’t forgive Labor trying to knock out Green votes in the Prahran recount because they said “Better Clem, than them”. I saw one scrutineer challenge 198 out of 200 votes on papers that had been scrutinised 8 times before. I am sure the clients of Prahran Mission, and the Ministry of Housing residents won’t appreciate Labor’s efforts either. Labor knew they didn’t have the preferences to win.

Kirsdarke.
I think that it depends on a number of factors. I’ve always found Matthew Guy to be pretty obnoxious and if he’s like that as opposition leader then the Libs will be in trouble.
Another thing to keep in mind is that on current trends we won’t have an Abbott government in Canberra to rail against in 2018 so how a potential Shorten-led government is travelling in 2018 will also be a factor.
Finally I think that Labor now is more prepared for government than the Libs were in 2010, the Libs probably thought that they would reduce Labor’s majority but still lose in 2010, and unexpectedly winning led to them being fairly unprepared for government.

Wallace said he was concerned people who were forced into work might not be able to perform due to their condition, and could then lose their jobs and be pushed onto the Newstart allowance, which is lower than DSP payments

Exactly.

What a filthy bastard! This is a sneaky way to get people off DSP and onto Newstart or even worse, to get people off all welfare by making them so depressed they do themselves in. It is no secret that many people on DSP who fit into that ‘able to work one day, not capable the next’ category have mental health issues, serious ones. This government is intent on torturing asylum seekers so they become so desperate they will beg to be sent home. Now they are planning to extend the torture to people with disabilities, driving them to the point of suicide. Far-fetched? I don’t think so.

Demonising people with disabilities is as low as you can go, but the Howard-era members of Abbott’s ministry have form on this. They sat back and allowed Amanda Vanstone to demonise people on DSP by referring to them all as bludgers. That government decided kids with Down Syndrome and other serious, permanent disabilities were not disabled enough for their parents to receive a carer’s payment. A huge public outcry killed that bit of bastardry. Andrews learned his craft in that ministry and he is now able to be even more cruel than Howard and his team were ever able to be.

I have to ask the obvious question – how can some government-employed doctor who has never met you before possibly know more about your disability and health than your own doctor?

Which brings me to another point.

As well as demonising people with disabilities by implying they are all con artists this latest thought bubble (is it to distract form whatever Bishop is saying in Lima?) is also implying that family doctors are in on the con. This was not a good move, coming so soon after the Medicare co-payment fiasco. It made doctors the boogey men. If they increase fees to cover the expenses caused by that back-flip they will be very unpopular and doubtless will become the target of shock-jock hate. Now they are being accused of being willing assistants in welfare fraud. Who would ever have thought a Coalition government would ever have tried so hard to make enemies of the medical profession?

I shudder to think what will happen to the fragile people I know on DSP with mental health issues if they have to be assessed by a third party

Who wants to bet that Aspen Health gets the contract to reassess DSP recipients using the same formula that ATOS in the UK uses – is ATOS an Aspen subsidiary.

I have visions of banned company director Micheal Wooldridge bending his former colleagues’ ear. He was quite funny at fathers’ night at the local kindergarden (brother in law was working in Asia so I substituted magnificently playing with all the displays as keenly as any of the dads)